An Act in Three Parts

We've been here before. Departure from SE Asia imminent. Returning to Australia for a new job and a new beginning. I hesitate to use the phrase "third time lucky", as after two failed attempts, I'd like to think my decision making has improved. But who knows?

Still, I call this an act in three parts, as this is the finalisation of my third SEA odyssey over a period of almost 11 years. It has been quite the journey, but something tells me - perhaps because of the criteria I employed in finding my latest place of employment - that the journey is near its end. At least the SEA-resident aspect of it anyway. At least in this stage of my life, while we have young children. I am a firm believer in the never-say-never mindset, however in this instance, I do think the end of this period of my life is nigh.

It began in mid-2008, answering an ad for a mine manager's role at a gold mine in Malaysia. I was with J.J. McDonald & Sons at the time, although at that point we were already in the throes of a Watpac takeover, which was leaving a scent that was somewhat repulsive to me. Plus, as would become more apparent in the ensuing year, I was trying to find a way out of the domestic situation I had deposited myself into a couple of years before. The journey of self-discovery is a fucking painful one just quietly, at least for me. Anyway, a phone interview with Dean while doing weekend work at the office quickly lead to an offer, and frankly, an offer the likes of which I will never likely see again. FARK. Ok, Avocet looked after their expats for sure, but the thing is, I kind of got in at the end of an era. We will likely never see roles or salaries or conditions like that again. It was truly amazing, and luckily for me, the job matched it. Penjom was a wonderful four years, and I got to do some of the very best work I have done while there. Plus I made some fantastic friends, super colleagues, and learned a whole lot. Yes, there was that incident where I took my ex to the office and we had a full-on physical altercation. Fuck. That. Shit. I do not intend to write about it. Not now anyway. Maybe in a few years. Anyone reading this, if you know Brian, ask him. He was there. Dean protected me in the aftermath. Wow, what a lesson. I had it coming, but I suspect there was a subconscious part of me that wanted to bring this on.

Anyway, I suspect I'll write a more full-on Penjom epistle at a later date, this is more about the decade+1 at large. Following Penjom, once J Resources declared their intentions to screw the place completely, I followed Dean to the Philippines. Two weeks there was enough to tell me that it wasn't me. One, I am not an environmental engineer. Two, I wasn't sure the project was sound. Three, The Phils is not a good place to FIFO to. It was here actually, that I decided no FIFO for me, ever. So, back to KL, where I joined another old boss, John, to help him set up what was to be the biggest cement project in the world at that time. This was the first of my numerous mistakes, where trust and money are involved. A few months in, the government told us to move sites, and we ran out of money. John told me to cool my heels for a while, but that was not going to work. Why? Well, after being the Avocet mining poster boy for four years and living the high life, hey, I was still doing it, RM8.5k/month rent and all. When working, when being paid 200k+, all good. When not, it all falls apart fairly quickly. Lesson learned you'd reckon? Apparently not. Fuck it. Anyway, we got to late 2012, Lala had emerged by this stage, I had just been to London to sow my royal Star Trek oats, and we were suddenly in financial straits. Job hunting began in earnest.....

Texas. Fark. If only it was the one star state or whatever the Yanks call it. But no, we opted for southern Queensland, silver, shithouse company, megalomaniac boss, manage-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style. But, I was wowed by the wowser. The salesman, the guy who says it's awesome. Yep, we're funded, we have it all together, we're gonna kill it. Oh yeah baby. So I signed on, and 6 months later, we fled Texas under the cover of darkness, after one too many table-thumping sessions for me, and the writing on the wall for the project. It never recovered I'll add, and it cost my 30k of our own capital. Fucking idiot I am. Still, wifey and I, together with infant Lala, and B in utero, made the most of it. We set up home, did a lot of exploring, and generally made the most of the experience. It was here that my mum's warning to wifey hit home to her - he's a Brown, he'll make you a gypsy.

ASN Mark #2 is what gave me the get out of jail card for Texas. John rang, hey we have a new site, we have funding, we're awesome! So I said yeah yeah baby, get me on the next flight out of here. And frankly, from that period - Aug 2013 to about the same time in 2016, it was frigging fantastic. I spent a few weeks with Dean again, this time on Wetar, but the rest of it was with ASN, slowly but surely getting the project ready to kick. Of course that's when Najib stepped in, and the world in general lost faith in Malaysia. As did ALL of our funders. It slowly but surely dried up. And of course because we were targeting a certain kind of funder, those that ultimately filled the gap didn't like our (my) approach, and we got nowhere, fucking fast. So much so, that I went from 10-20k per month to SFA really, really fast. Enter Wowser #2. John was already one of my wowsers, but I fucking wowser-ed myself here. I listened, I waited 6 months. I did piss and moan, and even threatened the fucker, but to no avail. Hey I was so sure of him that in Jan 2016 I took the family to meet V&P in Bali, just for a weekend, a few G down the drain there. A couple of months later, I needed to refinance the business just to get us the F out of Dodge. Wow, what a fuck up. By me, yet again. Not the trust part, just the letting us get to the brink part.

Then came the shop. So based on the first 2-3 years of action since V and I bought the joint, we thought it was a money-making enterprise. And it was, then. But numerous Australian governments, the falling dollar, the rise of big franchises outside metro areas, and perhaps not quite getting it right, all led to a falling return. I did the study for V - in the first two years, the store took in 6k per day on average, every day. In the years I was involved and since, it was more like 3-4k. What a fucking difference. And all the difference, it seems, to turn it from awesome, to failure. That was occurring for at least 12 months before I got there, then throw in a second family for the shop to support, plus some dodgy business by one of the staff too, and it was pretty woeful. I was there a year, giving it our best shot, before deciding the time was ripe for a move back to mining. That process took another six months. I originally thought it would see me moving elsewhere in Oz, but interestingly, it was back to SEA that we ventured.

Gulf was full of promise, but frankly I was told porkies during my interview. I wasn't the only one either, that story was being fed to pretty much everyone. Had I known the truth, I would never have signed on. Still, it got us out of the shop, back to Asia, and making an income again. Kupang was an interesting place, but we could see straight away that it was not a long-term one. At least not for the family. I was there about a year before I decided to start looking again, and if you look back 20 or so posts, you'll see the outcome. July 2019, and we were out. This time though, with no immediate lifeline back in Oz to go back to. But, we had wifey's parents place in KL sitting idle. All bar me are Malaysian citizens too, so it made sense to go chill in KL while the next move was figured out. In the meantime I did some earnest job hunting, and eventually, in late October, it paid off. So back to Oz we head.

The last two occasions that saw us move to Oz did have a plan for long-term, but it didn't surprise me that they weren't. I always had a penchant for Asian living, and was always dead keen on a return. But mining over here is just not stable, not predictable, and not providing the answers I need. Most countries here are either in the infancy of their mining industries, or seriously trying to nationalise them, not involve more expats or foreign companies. So I just can't see the 10-year plan that I am searching for coming off, not anytime soon anyway, and not in a residential situation. It's these reasons that make me think that this latest move is the final one, at least at this stage of my life.

But before I sign off from SEA, I do want to reflect. 2008 saw a move to Ampang, which was ok, but nothing special to me. Frankly it has more bad than good memories and I really didn't like our townhouse that much. After I finished things with the ex, I moved to Lipis and spent weekends in KL. That's where I met wifey. She lived with me in Lipis for a while in our little house in Taman Permai. But soon she got bored of the lifestyle, especially not working, so we grabbed a condo in Mont Kiara at Seni. It was a superb apartment, brand-new, all the mod-cons, and during the 18 months we were there, Mum, V, Naomi and Josh came to stay, which was grand, as did Peter at a later date. We also hosted a few parties, had Skip and Chook visit, and enjoyed the proximity to Solaris, amongst other places. When we came back in 2013, we stayed at Russ's apartment in Mutiara, close to Ampang, for almost a year until he sold it. That was pretty awesome too, with a lot of stuff close-by. The two memories that spring to mind the most though, are having a HUGE monkey get into our laundry - we figured there was a family of them living in an empty apartment downstairs, and the "bubbles" that Sophie saw when I was away on Wetar with Dean. Wow, both interesting memories. We also hosted V and Paul while we there.

From there, we moved to Damansara Heights, my favourite of all our places in KL. Wifey liked Seni more, but I loved the character of the home in DH, as well as the location. We had a downstairs playroom for the kids that was simply superb. Having that kind of resource in any house is a massive boon for kids, especially with a TV on the wall, plenty of foam tiles, toys and things to play with. Loved it! The house was older, and in need of work, but it allowed us to house Mum, Aunty Heidi, V and Paul for another trip, which was awesome. That trip didn't quite go to plan as due to a health scare for Mum, they missed the flight over, and due to a F-up, Mum and Aunty Heidi missed the flight home, haha! But we had a superb time with them. Plus, being so close to Bangsar, Damansara Plaza, Mont Kiara and pretty much everywhere else, it was a super location. Now it would be even more so, with a MRT station outside the front of the complex. But, mid-2016, it was time to go. I won't write much about Kupang here, and Sungai Pelek will be handled in another post, so overall, that pretty much encompasses our lives in KL. I may go into more detail in more specific posts later, but for now I just wanted to reflect overall, what the last 11 years has meant for me. I do miss the old Penjom days with the crew, I do miss the old expat-lifestyle, but not in a pining manner. Moreso in a nostalgic one. Those days are gone, likely forever. I shall miss them, but it is time to move on.

Dave Brown out.

Noodling

So I recently spent a week back in Oz - more to come on that soonish I hope! Anyway, while there I decided to have a dabble at an aspect of my all-things-metal hobby that I thus far was unable to in Malaysia, and that is noodling.

Noodling? I hear you ask - I thought you indulged in noodles on a frequent basis as it was. Ah yes dear reader, you are correct. Possibly more often than I should, especially here when a noodle factory is close by and we get to eat the awesome fresh product each week!

Noodling, however, has nothing to do with the slurpy goodness of a bowl of Hakka mee, or chee cheong fan, or pork noodle, or wantan mee, or loh shi fan, or laksa, or char kuey tau. Yes, I could go on and on...

Noodling is the activity where one grabs a heap of in-circulation coins and looks through them, in the hope of finding some that are worth more than face value. They could be rare coins, low mintage coins, error coins, coins that were never meant for circulation, the list is quite extensive. The beauty is that say one takes $100 in $1 coins from the bank, and finds 5 worth keeping. Well, the other $95 just goes straight back to the bank, and the only money "spent" is on coins worth more than their face value. Learning that takes some time, but it's worth it - some of these coins are worth thousands of dollars, which is simply amazing. I have been watching this activity, largely on YouTube channel PJ's Coin Capers, for some time now, and have been itching to try. So during the past week, try it is exactly what I did!

Initially, I grabbed a heap of $1 coins, and fingered my way through them. My first go was a little overwhelming as I ended up keeping a heap of coins - all the non-standard ones I found. Of course not all of those are low mintage, so on some further investigation, many could be returned to circulation, and thusly were. I soon ended up at my mum's and ventured to the bank to get a swag of other denominations to add to the experience.

~$1,200 of noodling, plus a couple of finds in change later, and wow! That added up really quickly! The table below is the result of this first round.

These photos are fucked. I have tried a heap of times to get this picture in a better quality, but to no avail. I guess it's not designed for big tables, although I am positive I have done this before for a punting entry. Anyway, in future I will likely only post summary data, plus I want to get this done, so I'll leave it for now., The point is, according to my research, the roughly $64 of coins I put aside seem to be worth over $150 on eBay, assuming one can find a buyer - all prices came from the sold in last 30 days page, so you'd have to be optimistic they would sell. The only caveat is that I am no expert on rating condition, but I did try to rate my coins conservatively.

Anyway, so ends round 1. I am impressed, and hooked. This was a lot of fun and I loved it! More to come for sure.

Note to self: check out Junior Minties when the time is right....